


be good to me i beg of him

by orphan_account



Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Depression, M/M, Mental Illness, Self destructive actions, Self destructive thoughts, Third Person Limited, but if you look past joker's view of it i promise it's there in bruce's actions, but please remember he's a shitty person, graphic depictions of mental illness, hurt comfort, the batjokes is more of a background thing, unconventional self harm, you may feel empathy for joker
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-20
Updated: 2020-10-20
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:02:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,201
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27117196
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: joker is supposed to be manic, isn't he? he's the big bad villain of gotham, isn't he? he's been escaped from arkham for a week and yet not a peep from him. silent on the bathroom floor. not dead, but he sure wishes he was.
Relationships: Joker (DCU)/Bruce Wayne, Past Joker (DCU)/Harley Quinn
Comments: 6
Kudos: 45





	be good to me i beg of him

**Author's Note:**

> OKAY LISTEN it is batjokes it's just from joker's warped perspective due to his ass mental health in this fic. check tags for tws but i will also add TW for abusive actions from joker to harley because that is the nature of their relationship. i did add some sublte harlivy plugs th bc i am a lesbian and i think i'm legally required.  
> anyway enjoy whatever this is.

> "everyone could see the way his muscles worked, / the way we look like animals, / his skin barely keeping him inside"
> 
> \- Little Beast, Richard Siken

He wasn't supposed to turn out this way. He was loud and manic and- fuck -he was a villain, were these not the things he was supposed to be? The facade he was meant to maintain? Joker made anyone who crossed his path cry and bleed and vomit. He was repulsive and deteriorating every day. Fighting until he was the one spitting out blood, teeth and words slathered in laughing hatred. Hate that dripped sweet like honey, coating his throat and covering his teeth in a sort of slime- no... that, too, was blood.

Hate slathered in blood and love that’s drenched in honey, sickly smooth and viscous. What was the difference besides the colour, really? Hate and love are the same things even despite one always hurting worse.

The bathroom tiles are cold, the feeling seeps into his bones until his- albeit sparing -body heat makes them some vague hallucination of warmth. He drags his fingers around dry smatterings of blood, chipping small portions off. He works at it with trembling hands and bitten-down fingernails, nail polish just as peeled as the blood beneath him. A wave of anger crashes through and he screams, curling into himself and covering his ears with his forearms. It doesn't dissolve into laughter, it turns into sobs. Full body shaking sobs that tear their way through the thickness in his throat and the tightness in his chest.

It aches and he lets it, he's always let it happen. There’s something therapeutic about it.

Therapeutic in the way he feels his skin pull and his muscles stretch. The aching burn gives him something to live for, something to remind him that he’s alive. Alive in spite of the world’s best efforts towards the opposite. Everything adding up to his demise, everyone plotting against him at all times.

This was it.

His chest seizes and he dares to think it’s the end but there’s a voice in the back of his head that reminds him, unkindly, that it’s not. He’s going to keep living through the pain while time fades together, merging seconds to minute to hours to days. He’ll melt into the floor if he's lucky. Joker wouldn’t describe himself as lucky.

He’d describe himself as a necessary nuisance, who would take on the burden of awakening Gotham if not him? Nobody got their attention the way he did, nobody haunted their every waking second like him. Not Two-Face or Killer Croc or Riddler or Penguin. Nobody could occupy Gotham like him. Nobody except- well did Batman really count? There wasn’t fear associated with him but maybe there was. Maybe when people saw Batman they were afraid, not  _ of  _ him but because his presence meant something wicked this way comes.

Joker was that something wicked.

At least, usually, he was. Lately, he feels like a scab that keeps getting picked at and torn apart and lifted from the skin he’s made his home. Lately, he feels as though he could go missing and nobody would be any the wiser. Nobody would care to call to see if he was still alive and maybe, just maybe, it was better that way. There’d be nobody hunting him down like there usually was. Nobody to bother him in his solitude when, for once in his despicable, hated life, he just wanted to be by himself in ever-burdening silence.

In this pit of despair in which nobody could reach him.

But then there is a sound somewhere in the rundown, abandoned duplex he called home. A crashing, the snarling of dogs. A woman saying “heel” and “stay” in a tone he would recognise anywhere.

There are footsteps in the hallway, clicking against the dilapidated wooden flooring. Joker tries curling in on himself tighter, teeth clenching and the tension of it shoots through his temples. It all hurts: every nerve ending that should be dead, every spasm of sinewy muscle, every broken and reset bone. The footsteps stop and he cracks open an eye to see the shadow of a familiar set of mismatched shoes through the crack between the door and uneven flooring.

Then, the voice again. More Harley than Harleen in its irritation, it grates on him. He likes to think the tone would shift if he opened the door, suddenly Harley would be the doting doctor she was when he met her and she would hold him, revere him. Maybe. Probably not. But there was always a small chance. People could say what they wanted about Joker but he was nothing if not a man of hope- hope for all of the wrong things, perhaps, but hope nonetheless. Isn’t that sad?

The shadows shift and then a fist bangs on the door, the pain in Joker’s skull intensifying tenfold. He groans, shifting from his tight coil to kick at the door as violently as he can muster. “Shut up! SHUT UP! Quit it with the fucking banging, Christ almighty!” He screams. “DO YOU HAVE  _ ANY _ FUCKING RESPECT?” 

There’s a moment of silence and Joker allows himself the feeling of victory, maybe she’s finally come to her senses about him calling the shots. Done gallivanting with that plant lady and coming home. This thought is shattered when the door is, a red and black bat smashing through leaving a wide enough gap that he can see her face. She’s glaring, blowing a strand of hair out of that face before reeling back again. She’s already got enough wiggle room to open the door from the inside but instead decides more destruction is the answer.

_ Wonder who she learned that from? _ The nagging voice echoes in the back of Joker’s mind and he shuts his eyes closed again muttering a downright pitiful “shut up” under his breath.

“I’ll have some  _ respect _ , J, when ya explain t’me what the everlovin’ fuck you’ve been doin’ on the bathroom floor for,” she pauses, inhales, pinches her lips into a frown, “a week?”

Six days. Close enough. He’s on the offensive, “Wrong. God, Harls, can’t you get anything right? No etiquette at all, clearly your redhead lady friend has some work to do.” The name is a slip of the tongue.

Harley sighs, the sound of the lock popping enough to convince Joker to open his eyes again. He glares up at her, the way she’s resting her forearms on the splintered door frame like she owns the place.

“I come here, out of a place of worry- somethin’ I  _ clearly _ shouldn’t be wastin’ on the likes of ya -but I’m a good fuckin’ person so here I am. Get off your fuckin’ high-horse, J, ya look pathetic.” She leans back, opening the door now and letting it hit his ankle without a second thought.

He doesn’t even bother to wince despite the way the ache travels up his shin. No weakness, never show weakness. Just laugh about it. Laugh about it. “LAUGH, DAMMIT,” he shouts, sitting up and quickly pulling his knees up as he slams his head down. He feels a pop in his nose and warmth, only tipping his head back when Harley grabs a fistful of his hair and pulls.

Joker hears the bat drop to the floor more than he sees it, one of Harley’s hands still in his hair while the one that was holding the bat- presumably -is now pinching the middle of his nose.

“ _ Jesus _ , J,” her voice is soft now and it’s piercing. “I still- okay, no, I know why ya do this but at the same time, I have no fuckin’ clue. It’s exhaustin’.”

“HA!” The laugh tears out of him like a bat out of hell and he pitches forward, knocking Harley away with the sudden force. He laughs until tears start falling again and he can’t tell whether they’re tears of laughter or of sorrow. For a moment, one blissful, idyllic moment there is clarity in the manic burst of laughter and in the tears that cloud his line of sight. “ _ You’re  _ exhausted? You? Don’t know if you can tell time, darling, but you haven’t fucking been  _ around _ . Don’t try to tell me  _ you’re _ exhausted.”

He can feel it, the venom dripping from his words now. The clarity gone, replaced with malice and a certain rage that’s always on some varying level from a simmer to a boil. Now it’s spilling over the sides as Harley grabs the bat, holding it in one hand appearing relaxed but he knows her. He knows she’s ready to swing. He wants her to do it.

“Don’tcha spin this around on me there, Puddin’,” she says, but the pet name is acrimonious at best. It burns in a way he’ll never admit.

His gaze locks on the bat again, the scrapes in the paint and the dents in the metal.  _ Are you seriously romanticising getting beaten over the head with a baseball bat? _ It’d feel like heaven.

It’s a suicide mission now. “I’ll ‘spin’ it however I damn well please, Harls. It’s not spinning if it’s the truth!  _ You _ dipped out.  _ You  _ left. That’s called cowardice, you’ve always been that way. A follower and nothing more.” His mouth waters as her hand tightens on the handle. “You don’t get to claim exhaustion, you don’t  _ live here anymore _ in case you forgot! I’m glad to remind you, I’ve done it since day one. It’s why you attached to what's-her-face so easily, can’t stand on your own two feet without someone there to help you stumble on to whatever shithole you call home now.”

The wrong choice of words, Harley’s grip loosens and when Joker looks up she just looks sad. Pity. She’s pitying him.

“J, I know what you’re tryin’ t’do right now and I’ll admit I was ten seconds away from beatin’ your head intah the fuckin’ ground. But I don’t live in a shithole, I live with someone who cares about me- her name is Ivy, by the way. And it’s  _ our  _ home that we created  _ together _ . I chose to leave because someone finally helped me see what a pitiful, sad, little man ya really are.” She uses the bat to balance as she squats down, eyeing him with a certain fire to her eyes that sends a jolt of fear through him. But she’s not done: “But I came back, y’see? Here I am! I don’t fuckin’ know why, now, maybe I thought ya’d actually want help for once. Clearly, I was wrong. But I also  _ know ya _ , Jack,” the name makes his stomach churn, “and isn’t that horrible for ya? Bein’ known by me. Ya forget I’m a doctor,  _ darlin’ _ .”

“Not a smart one, considering you came back.” The words leave his mouth before he has time to think about them and now they’re at a standstill. Not because he insulted her intelligence, he’s always done that it’s something he knows Harley’s used to now. No, it’s come to a standstill because he finally admitted he’s no good while at the same time admitting how he feels about himself genuinely: nothing worth returning for. No matter what kind of faux-gall he creates, the air he presents himself with, the delusions that cloud his ability to understand himself clearly-- he knows this.

“ _ Jesus _ ,” she repeats, not for the last time, “alright, alright, you’ve got my attention.” Harley drops the bat, reaching to grab some toilet paper and then gesturing vaguely. She wants him to tip his head back. He stays still.

She sighs. “Can ya just take a direction for once? Just once! Your macho man ‘I don’t play by the rules’ bullshit ain’t workin’ on me anymore.” She tugs his head back once again, shoving either end of a piece of toilet paper she rolled into his nostrils.

The dust makes him sneeze and he can feel blood seeping into the cotton. He glares at the smug look on Harley’s face but doesn’t try to remove the makeshift clot. A silent defeat. Significantly less satisfying than the idea of the bat colliding with his skull which is once again pounding profusely behind his eyes. They sit like this for a while and Joker can feel the tension in his shoulders, he wants to lay down on the floor again. Wants to continue his wallowing in peace, to be consumed by the shitty linoleum and eventually die off. That doesn’t seem to be happening and anger pushes through his veins once more. Can he not have one good thing? One measly little request and whatever is listening can’t even give it to him? Now, who’s pathetic?  _ Still you _ .

“Why are you here, Harley?” He finally asks the question that’s been on his mind. He’s well aware that none of the answers his brain is coming up with is the truth, well aware she’s doing just dandy without him- even if he shudders at the thought of admitting it.

She purses her lips for a moment and then opens her mouth only to close it again. He hates this. He hates it when she does this and tells her as much. She’ll catch flies like that. She hits him upside the head and slouches, crossing her arms over her chest like she feels… guilty? No, no way. How could anyone feel guilty hitting him, he deserves it every time it happens.

“I’m here because ya sure as hell weren’t in Arkham and yet it was radio silence. ‘N’ he thought ya might be dead or worse.” She’s staring into him now and it’s making him uncomfortable.

“What’s worse than death?”  _ He _ ?

“This.” She’s gesturing again, he wants her to just sit still for once. “This is worse. This self-pityin’, self-loathin’, piss pile. Layin’ there like a corpse but very much alive. That’s worse, Jack, so much worse. Ivy told me not to come, got all stern,” she sits up, puffing out her chest, “‘Harls, you know if you go over there he’s just going to manipulate you into doing something you regret!’” She’s slouching again. “She’s right, of course. Here I am, helpin’ ya like ya deserve it or somethin’- after everythin’ -but I think the part that sucks most about what ya did t’me was not gettin’ rid of  _ all _ of Harleen. She cares about people, even bad people. So here we are.”

Here we are, indeed.

A jester and a harlequin sitting on the floor of a bathroom. One of them bleeding from their nose and the other being what she always should have been if not for malicious selfishness. If not for manipulation and vats of acid and violent need for control. Harleen had to still be alive, if not, who would be left to love the Joker?

“Who’s he?”

This catches Harley off guard, Joker can see it in her face. She’s panicking, thinks he’s in her head again and he might very well be- maybe she didn’t say ‘he thought’ out loud, maybe the bond isn’t as broken as he thought but then the panic falls and he’s left wandering through the ceaseless dark in his own mind again. She said it.

“Nobody, I said ‘we’,” she says, standing up and grabbing the bat as she goes. “Glad t’see you’re alive ‘n’ all, I guess, better get back I have someone waitin’ for me.”

Joker weighs his options: either make her tell him or watch her go and let himself be eaten up by the floor all over again. The curiosity has bigger teeth, though. He stands quickly, ignoring the way the world blacks out around his field of vision and how his legs cramp at the sudden movement. He reaches to wrap his hand around her wrist, vice-like, she tenses.

When the room stops spinning he looks at her, his eyes gleaming in the low, flickering light of half-dead fluorescents. A painting of Lucifer, fallen for having loved something too much. “Who’s  _ he _ ?”

“Let go of me,” she says, unmoving as if afraid. He’s never given her a reason to not be. His grip loosens, she could get away if she wants to.

Joker tries to straighten his back, tries to make himself seem bigger than he is in an extreme juxtaposition to his earlier stance. It’s faltering, he can feel it. “Just tell me, Harls. It’s not that fucking hard to tell me.”

“I  _ can’t _ ! That’s not my shit to share.” Harley’s voice wavers and she pulls her arm from his hold.

She staggers through the doorway, holding the bat out to maintain the distance between them. Joker looks down, looks back up. On a good day, he could take out the distance in two moves. On a good day, he wouldn’t even be  _ in  _ this situation. This pathetic, bullshit, heinous situation where Harley was seeing him at his lowest (as if she hasn’t seen it before). He grabs the end of the bat and it has electricity moving up his arm into his elbow. He figures he could get her to hit him now.

“C’mon now, Harls,” he says, pulling the bat upwards an inch away from the bottom of his jaw. He lets his voice pitch up, cooing in a way he hasn’t in months. “Just be a good girl and tell me who this mystery man is, hmm? You know lying to me doesn’t get you anywhere.”

For a moment, the movement shifts in his favour. This is a dynamic he knows, a stancing he is familiar with. He pushes, she pulls, he pushes harder and she falls down. He can work with this. But then the fear in her eyes dissipates, the end of the bat pushes against his throat and she seems taller than she ever has before. Her eyes narrow and Joker feels his blood drop to his feet. The room sways.

“Don’t ya fuckin’  _ dare _ talk to me like that,” she hisses, pushing the bat forward and Joker gasps. Panic floods his system, he’s losing, he’s losing, oh fuck- “Eat shit, Jack.” Her voice is watery but she still stands as if she’s a God. Regal. Poised. Everything Joker always saw himself as but instead of feeling proud of his creation or feeling as though he’s looking in the mirror he just feels… insignificant.

Harley yanks the bat back and lets out a whistle that makes Joker cringe. The hyenas heard it, though, he can hear the pitter-patter of their paws on the stairs. A part of him aches for forgiveness. To reach out and cup her face in his hands, to kiss apologies over her cheeks. He loved her, at some point, he must have.

He didn’t.

But she loved him.

Past tense and it hurts worse.

“Fuck you for dissapearin’. Fuck you for manipulatin’ me. Fuck you for hurtin’ me every fuckin’ day we knew each other. Rot.” She says, spinning sharp on her heel and walking to the end of the hallway.

Joker doesn’t move, just stares straight ahead where she once stood. Everything is burning.

Footsteps come to a halt and Joker waits for the finishing blow.

“Y’know who ‘he’ is, Jack. Ya might be a repulsive excuse for human life but you’re not stupid.”

And then Joker is alone again. Nothing to distract him from the running train of acid reflux-inducing thoughts echoing in his brain with no chance of stopping. There is no lever he can pull to switch the trolley from five to one. Nobody will survive this. Joker won’t survive this.  _ Batman _ .

He screams. A paper shredder in his junk mail throat. Nails on a chalkboard and forks on a plate. Unforgiving and done out of malice. He screams until his lungs burn and his sinuses sting. Screams until he crumples to the floor and doesn’t feel the impact. Slams clenched fists down over and over and over again.

_ What the fuck are you doing? _ That voice again, that pitiful fucking voice.

“SHUT UP! Shut up, shut the fuck up! Do you know what it means to just be quiet?” Joker shouts, voice cracking and throat viscous.

He pounds his fists into the side of his head now, clamping his palms over his ears and pushing himself up. He sends a fist through a wall. Feels as though he’s being tortured, limbs attached to horses forced to run in different directions.

And then it is still. He’s heaving breaths that feel like being stabbed and he is still. If he had walked to the window in the room to his right he would have seen Harley throwing the bat into a tree and screaming at a black car Joker’s been in on more than one occasion. If he had walked to the window he would have seen a more than familiar man getting out of the car and approaching Harley like she was a scared animal before pulling her to his chest and holding her in a way Joker only dreams of. If he had walked to the window maybe he wouldn’t be laying himself down on the floor, curling up all over again and forcing himself to sleep.

If. If. If.

-

> “He was not dead yet, not exactly- / parts of him were dead already, certainly other parts were still only waiting / for something to happen, something grand,”
> 
> \- Road Music, Richard Siken

Joker wakes up warm, uncomfortably so. Sweat sticking to his skin in all the wrong places but cooling him too quickly sending a shiver down his spine. He’s in a limbo of temperature in a body far too damaged to regulate properly. His knuckles are swollen and so are his eyes, even awake and held by darkness he is squinting. There is an outline in front of him and a pang in his chest when he sees it.

He was carried here. On the rays of dawn or the beams of midnight, he was picked up, tucked in and watched over. Something about it all makes his hair stand on end, whether out of disgust or discontent remains a mystery until the shape moves and he is hit with a realisation. A freight train slamming right into his heart and knocking the wind right out of him.

At the end of the day or maybe the beginning, it was always this. Wasn’t it? Every breakdown and stick-up and half-baked plan pulled out of his ass to insight fear and horror into the hearts of Gothamites. It would always be this. Him and Bruce. Him and Batman. Him and clear blue eyes that have a shine to them that echoes around Joker’s chemical-addled brain.

_ Oh.  _ There’s the yearning, the all-encompassing need. Suddenly and without any kind of warning. He wants to vomit. Flashes of his morning, maybe not morning, who knew what time of day it happened, blinded him every time he blinked. The mattress is rough, hard and uncomfortable as Joker shifts, trying to shrink away from the feelings building up again. What’s another thing tacked onto the list of things he couldn’t regulate?

He watches Bruce watching him now, the rise and fall of a suited shoulder, the wrinkles of stress in his forehead. The two of them laying face-to-face on a shoddy mattress in a dingy room with a draft. The man who- presumably -found Joker tear-stained, bruised, and with a tissue stuffed up his nose. The man who saw this and picked him up to put him somewhere comfortable. Then instead of leaving, stayed to watch over him.

A sick and twisted guardian angel. Maybe he got off on it, maybe Bruce liked watching Joker writhe in fitful sleep.  _ No _ , things like that were Joker’s forte. Bruce did things because he cared. Because he did know how to be gentle. Because he knew what it meant to be cared for. It makes Joker’s throat tighten up.

_ Kiss me. _ The echo hurts. Neither of them reaches yet and Joker clenches the sore hand under his head tight enough to split his palm with his nails if he just applies a little more pressure. Bruce reaches forward, hand hovering above Joker’s elbow, a certain questioning in his eyes. It’s like he was lying there awake this whole time waiting for Joker to wake up, to ask permission. The breath Joker is holding squeezes his chest. He nods, doesn’t want to know what his voice sounds like after everything.

_ Kiss me, please. _

It’s all tender now. One wrong move and a king could be captured.

The way Bruce is looking at him when the hand comes to rest makes a violent urge bubble up again. Joker feels trapped. He’s stuck here, the freight on his chest. He’ll never move again and can only lay there hopelessly. The mattress creaks as Bruce sighs, sitting up and rolling his shoulders back. The hand slides off Joker's elbow, a connection dropped and the switch in his brain flips. Take the king. He watches the expanse of Bruce’s shoulder, wanting to see them bare and marred, see scars he knows he made in triumph and others that he didn’t while rage simmers. That’s Joker’s skin to split, nobody else’s.

He’s sure Bruce is getting up to leave. Now that he knows that Joker’s okay what’s the point in staying?  _ Kiss me goodbye _ . Joker wants to grab him, fear like caramel sticking in his throat. He’s choking on it again, all of it too much at once and a scream rips out from the barricade when Bruce stands. It’s scratchy and more of a howl of pain than a scream. Bruce turns quickly, worry pinned to his expression and Joker’s heart aches all over again. His mouth is open though nothing more comes out. The one time he actually shuts up being the one time he needs to speak, the irony of it all coming to wipe him out. A tsunami of ‘I knew it’s’ pushing him over the edge.

“Joker, I-” Bruce pauses, gesturing vaguely with his hands before rubbing them down his face.  _ Kiss me before you go _ . “I want to help you. I want to… be there for you, but I can’t keep guessing. I’m a detective at best, not a God damned mind reader. I have a life outside of you, outside of all of this. Us. Whatever that means. I was worried, I can admit that I was worried about you and you’ve never given me anything I can actually work with. You fight every chance you get, you never let me in even when you think you do.”

Joker bites his tongue, hard. It hurts, the physical pain overwhelming the ache in his chest. He wants to say “kiss me, don’t go”. He wants to touch. He wants to end this stalemate. He wants so much but he doesn’t know how to articulate it so he lashes out, the only language he truly knows. He’s familiar with the tango of Joker and Batman, not the waltz of Jack and Bruce. He sits up and lunges forward, tackling Bruce to the ground. It flips quickly out of his favour when Bruce knocks Joker’s grip from his shoulders, flipping them so Joker’s wrists are pinned against the ground.

“Go on!”  _ Please, kiss me _ . “Hit me! Give it your all, darling, really let me have it!”  _ What’s the difference, anyway?  _ “You want something to work with, Brucie? Work your fist into my jaw! I don’t know what I want ever! That’s what makes the game we play, this dance we do, so fucking  _ fun _ !”

The facade slips, he can feel it. He doesn’t feel any rush of adrenaline, just an unsettling numbness that makes him feel so uncontrollably weak. He struggles against the hold as if to prove something to himself. He’s  _ not weak _ . He’s not! He has never been weak and he sure as hell won’t start now and Bruce is looking at him with anger and concern and fear and-

_ I want you _ .

“What do you want from me? I’m sick of the game, Joker, I’m done with this. I’m done! Do you understand just how exhausting doing the same thing over and over  _ gets _ ?” Bruce doesn’t lie, Bruce never lies- at least not to him. “I don’t want to kill you. I don’t want you to kill  _ me _ . It doesn’t… It doesn’t have to be like this.”

_ I want you _ .

So why is it so hard for Joker to tell the truth?

_ I want to be loved by you _ .

Love and hate were never the same, were they?

“When have I ever gotten what I wanted, Bats?” And he laughs but it’s damp, tears pooling in the corners of his eyes. He can feel Bruce’s grip loosen but he doesn’t move, just leans his head back against the floor to let the tears roll down.

They stay like that for maybe a moment longer before Bruce gets up, running a hand through his hair and turning his back to the Joker. There’s no threat here, not really. This fact doesn’t fuel the sorrow in Joker’s head like he thought it would. It’s resignation now. Resignation in the silence and the deep breaths that move Bruce’s whole frame. Joker props himself up on his elbows, not motivated enough to get up off of the floor. There’s an electricity in the air now, something that feels like it’s pushing him. He can’t name it.

“What’s stopping you from getting what you want now?” Bruce asks, still facing away.

The question makes Joker pause and then a shock jolts through him, a laugh pushing its way free to mix with the tears. His voice is a wreck. “What a stupid question!” He pushes himself up, swaying when he gets to his feet. His equilibrium is fucked up in more ways than he can count. “ _ You _ , Batsy, it’s always  _ you _ !”

“You and your stoicism and your emotionless facade! I want so much, so fucking much and you- you don’t even know! I was being  _ obvious _ ! Maybe not in so many words but certainly with my actions! How blind are you? You know you’re not actually a bat, right?”

Bruce turns, incredulous, and Joker can feel a familiar fire in his veins. Maybe, just maybe, this was the normalcy he craved so much. This familiarity can pull him out of this slump.

“And-”

“‘And’ what, Joker?” Bruce’s face is steel, unwavering.

“And- And-” Joker’s stumbling over his words now, like a newborn deer under the scrutiny. Bruce’s face covered in shadows, the light only catching in his eyes and Joker’s caught in the headlights. He stands there, arms frozen mid-flail, feeling dumb.  _ Idiot, IDIOT, say something _ ! And once he starts a dam breaks, “And I  _ loved _ you! I loved you with everything I had to fucking give! I spend every waking minute thinking about  _ you _ ! About your hands curled into fists socking the life out of me. About your hands on my throat until everything blacks out. About batarangs cutting into my skin that’s already ripped to pieces by your hands and others. You are everything to me! You are my beginning and you’ll be my God-forsaken end and how fucking long do I have to beg you for that?”

He’s gone too far now, Bruce’s expression falling. The mask cracking and wavering and Joker didn’t care. He didn’t fucking care, he never cared. Not really. Not in a way that mattered. The only opinion he ever dared to value was Batman’s, not Bruce’s. They’re two different people in his mind and right now it was two versus one. Joker and Jack versus Bruce Wayne, whoever that truly was. Playboy? Billionaire? Vigilante? Who could genuinely say what this man was at his core? Joker always thought he knew Batman, understood him. That’s all he ever truly wanted. But maybe he didn’t.

Maybe he never did.

Joker shakes his head, feeling the argument in his head pounding against his temples rejecting that idea in its entirety.  _ No, no, no  _ he had to know Batman, to know Bruce. If he didn’t what was left of him? Just a dunce in clown makeup making a fool out of himself for a man he doesn’t really know and isn’t sure if he ever knew. A fool through and through. He was a jester, sure, to the king before him, shrouded in darkness. But no fool.

He stalks forward, shoving Bruce. Pushing against him until the man has no choice but to move backwards. Joker keeps pushing, fists flying into the sturdy surface before him. Blows landing but the pure feeling of adrenaline never comes. “How long do I have to beg you to fucking love me  _ back _ ?” He wails, shoving Bruce once more until his back hits the wall. Joker pauses, waiting for everything to crash down around him at the impact but nothing comes.

There is no fist in retaliation, no advancement other than the fumble earlier and Joker finds himself disoriented. Bruce had said he was done but there was no way he genuinely meant it, right?

Bruce opens his mouth to speak and Joker lunges forward, however unsteady on his feet as he may be, and slams his palm over the offending mouth that dared try interrupting him.

“DID I SOUND LIKE I WAS FINISHED?”  _ Yes _ . “NO! No, I fucking  _ didn’t _ !” He’s laughing, truly unhinged laughter that makes his mouth ache in the corners. The kind that made Gotham shudder as fear pooled into their guts. “You’re pathetic,” Joker spits, reeling back to slam his fist into Bruce’s gut, anything to feel normal. “What? No fancy suit and suddenly you forget how to hit me?”

_ Idiot. _

Bruce has him on the ground before he can even blink, a mirror of the earlier altercation. They could each say they were as done as they wanted but both knew the truth. It wouldn’t end until someone died. Joker thrashes violently against the floor, his mind a chorus of ‘yeses’ and ‘pleases’ and ‘never stops’. He’ll have splinters and bruises but what did it matter? He was finally getting what he wanted. After all, a kiss with a fist was better than none.

He squirms harder against the grip, screaming at the top of his lungs, slamming his head down against the ground until it feels like it’s on fire. Bruce grabs a fistful of his hair and he howls, yanking against the hold.

“Joker, stop.  _ Stop _ !” Always so stern, Bruce was, really no fun at all. “JACK!”

Joker stills. Any brief flash of mania turning into an unbridled rage, disgust pooling in his gut. “What the fuck did you just call me?”

“Jack,” Bruce says. He speaks it so simply that anyone who overheard him might believe that it’s what he’s always called Joker. The name sounds so sweet on his lips like it’s made its home there before this moment. Like he’s spoken it before.

Once more, Joker makes the attempt to thrash out of Bruce’s hold, to no avail. “Where did you learn that?” He demands. He can feel his pulse quickening, it pushes against his skull, thrumming through his veins like heroin.

If. If. If.

Bruce blinks and Joker wants to live on the delicate skin just below his eyes.

“Harley told me.”

“Oh, you two talk now?”

“Yes.”

There’s a pause and Joker feels disconnected from himself in the silence. What was he supposed to do with this information? Live with it? Learn from it? Fight against it until it stops being the truth? Delude himself? All of his secrets suddenly feel like they’re bleeding out of him and panic settles in, true to form in its virulence. Bruce must feel Joker’s body tense, he lessens the force of his hold but Joker doesn’t move. He fears that if he does he’ll just end up on the floor again.

It’s better like this, a comforting pressure on his chest keeping him grounded while his thoughts scatter. A fire burning in whatever is left of his frontal lobe. Anxiety ricocheting around like a pinball.

“Breathe, Jack,” Bruce says, his voice cutting through the television static.

_ I already fucking am _ .

But he must not be because Bruce moves to lighten the pressure on his torso and the panic settles deeper into his bone. He moves quickly, grabbing onto the sleeve of Bruce’s suit jacket.

“Stay,” Joker says, eyes damp and voice cracking on every letter. He’s surprised by the sound of it, not the scratchiness- which is to be expected -but the emotion in it. The need. He’d venture to say that wants and needs are like love and hate but isn’t sure if he wants to make that sort of distinction in his current state of mind. All fuzzy and barely there.

He has only half the mind to realise Bruce has resettled. There’s an expression on his face that Joker can’t quite get a read on. It’s not concern, he doesn’t think, not anxiety, but somewhere close. Somewhere just before the precipice. Like he’s still thinking about thirty possible outcomes of this situation before he braces himself for impact.

Joker laughs through the burden between his ribs, pushing out wheezing air as he does. He already knows where he’s going, right back to Arkham. In a cell that is more of a Batman shrine than anything else because as with most things Joker doesn’t do anything halfway. Predictability is one of man's greatest strengths and one of his most violent weaknesses. Its comfort is multitudinous but its ability to shatter isn’t worth the notoriety. Joker doesn't just hate being known by Harley, he hates being known at all. Including being known by himself.  _ Coward _ .

“Don’t call me Jack,” he says, slowly sitting up as Bruce backs off. “Never call me that.”

He only ever wanted to be wanted, but he doesn’t want to be wanted as someone he’s not. Someone he hasn’t been in so long that a name sweet on the tongues of others feels like botulism in his own.

All the fights seeped out of him now it’s left nothing behind. The fight or flight subsided the need for self-destruction vanquished with the truth he can acknowledge inside of himself.

“What do you need me to do?” Bruce asks, standing slowly and extending the hand that made Joker’s elbow warm. It’s just as warm to hold, if not a little rough and calloused. A hand that has been utilised, held harshly and softly, kissed with lips and bruises. For a moment Joker lets himself relish in the feeling.

He thinks about the question for only a moment longer and lets go of Bruce’s hand even though he still feels wavering in his stance. “You take me back and we do it all over again whenever I’m feeling more like myself,” Joker says simply. He heads out into the hallway, turning back for a mere second. “You’re parked out front?”

-

The walk to the car is silent, even as Bruce gets the passenger side door for him. There’s no quick-witted quip on Joker’s tongue of gentlemanly behaviour. No passion. No love in Bruce’s actions that Joker can see. Just two men going through the motions of their relationship. That’s what this was, a relationship. Not the kind either of them wanted, Joker would venture, but a relationship nonetheless.

The drive to Arkham is silent, too. Bruce’s hands firmly attached to the wheel. Joker turns in his seat slightly to watch him, his face illuminated by the dashboard. The watcher becomes the watched but… Bruce was always being watched wasn’t he? Whether as Batman or as Bruce the public eye was enamoured with him. Adoration oozing out of their pores like he was some sort of God. Maybe Joker wanted someone to look at him like that, wanted Bruce to look at him like that. To look at Joker the way Harley used too only this time it could be mutually beneficial.

This time Joker wouldn’t screw it all up. His body aches when turns to sit forward again, the events of his time spent at home settling into his bone tissue finally. There would never be a ‘this time’ would there?  _ No, not unless you do something criminally sane. _

“What am I supposed to do?” It never hurt to ask, except for when it did.

Bruce is confused, Joker can see it plain as day on his face. The way his eyes crinkle and his nose scrunches up, however briefly, and he glances to the joker. It’s a short-lived connection and his eyes are back on the road before Joker can commit that look into his memory. There was a flash of something. Imperceptible. Painfully human.

Bruce responds with his own question: “What do you mean?”

Joker sighs, glueing his eyes to the long, empty expanse of the road before him. He knows this path of asphalt like he knows the back of his hand: there’s bumps and potholes and lines of tar to fill in any unseemly cracks.

“You don’t love me when I’m doing everything in my power to make your life more… exciting. When I do my part of the dance. And you don’t love me when I’m sane, all low level, crimeless, minding my own damn business in my own home…” Joker trails off, picking at the skin around his nails. “So what am I supposed to do?”

“You cannot think this past week was sanity, J-” A pause. “Joker.”

Silence fills the car again and Joker’s cuticle begins to bleed. He moves onto the next one. If he wasn’t delusionally manic then he was sane, this had to be true. It had to be, it was the only facet of himself that he clung to. The only thing he felt he could no for certain and- he hears Bruce sigh. The car veers off their path, pulling to the side of the road where the pavement turns into gravel. The gear shifts. Park.

Joker turns as Bruce does, undivided attention being given so freely Joker wants to run. He closes his eyes.

“You get better. That’s what you do. You actually try to get better.”

His eyes only open when he’s sure he’s facing the horizon line, where the vague hints of foggy light are peeking over trying to spy on this moment. A moment Joker knows will vanish from his memory as soon as Arkham hands him his first paper cup of medication.

“I can’t,” he says.

He wants to. He could say that he could tell Bruce how badly he wants to but he knows himself better than that. He won’t make promises he can keep, not to Bruce, not to Batman. The unattainable man who, right here, right now, is so attainable it makes Joker’s heart race. Being loved, wanted, is right there in his grasp but his joints are too sore to close his fist around it tight enough.

He could lie, sure.

He won’t.

“Okay.”

And the car continues down the familiar path of the familiar road to the familiar building where the events of the past week will be vanquished from Joker’s mind. He will be free.


End file.
